


Not in our stars

by lilith_morgana



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Light Side Sith shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-03-31 06:26:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3967849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not certain she even likes him; he's fairly certain she's the only friend he has ever had. </p>
<p>Snapshots of Thomats the reluctant Sith & Vette's adventures in the galaxy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shadows (Dromund Kaas)

__  
  
  
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,  
_but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”_  
  
Shakespeare – **Julius Caesar**  
**  
**\-----  
  
  
  


  
Her collar comes off without preamble and she almost feels stupid at first.  
  
For not asking earlier. For feeling genuinely grateful – towards a fracking _Sith_ – for sparing her the pain and humiliation, as though he's doing it to be kind. (Why _is_ he doing it? Any of it? All of it? Fuck, she hasn't got a clue and there's hardly any time to sit down and _think_ these days.)  
  
For thinking, if only for a fraction of a second, that it was simpler with that slave mark. It had at least given her body pretty damn sharp outlines, formed indirect orders. Go there, stand up straight, don't mock the jailer. The last part had always been the most difficult.  
  
And then this weird Sith had come along, all questions and commands and those deep, calm eyes that don't fit a man in his position. He's clever, she can tell from the start. Clever and fucked up and broken and _unwilling_ ; she doesn't think he even _knows_ what he could make her do with that collar on. He doesn't seem to enjoy causing pain, doesn't revel in his kills. Mostly, he seems sort of _sad_. She wonders what kind of game he plays.  
  
“Let's try this thing as companions,” her sith lord tells her in a noisy cantina full of roaring Imperials and Vette snorts her too-bitter drink through her nose when she's trying not to laugh out loud.  
  
“Sure thing,” she manages eventually; the sarcasm makes her voice thick. “Me and my Sith pal.”  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Her Sith pal saves her ass a handful of times on Dromund Kaas. It's a reciprocal thing, of course. Plenty of disgusting wildlife to go around and they may both be pretty marvellous with their weapons but predators smell blood and move in the shadows.  
  
That's an adequate summary of the planet right there, Vette thinks. Wildlife and shadows where freedom goes to die. Hello there, and welcome to all hells poured into one crappy planet.  
  
It's a real difference travelling here with a Sith lord, of course. A weird, slightly uncomfortable difference walking beside this burly guy who carries two lightsabers and low-key humour carefully tucked inside his whole “look at me I'm Darth Baras' entrusted enforcer” persona. He speaks calmly, threads softly, but everyone can see he's got power.  
  
”Nice work.” He crawls up from a lush spot of vegetation, rubbing dirt and entails from his armour. She had shot a yozusk before it took a bite of big fat Sith leg and the beast had knocked him over as it fell down dead.  
  
She nods briefly, tucking her blasters back into her belt. Seems safe enough at the moment. ”Of course.”  
  


* * *

 

 

She learns a lot of small things about him in the next... well, however long they stay among the shadows and jungle beasts – you don't necessarily want to count time when you live as a slave or on the run, so she has unlearned it over the years. It's a pretty long time. Give or take.  
  
She learns a lot of small _things_ about him, and they form an odd pattern between them, inside her:  
  
  
  
In the ridiculously large and _bright_ apartment they rent – one with a view of the Imperial Headquarters where stern-looking people come and go all day and night – he keeps his stuff tidy. Everything in its place, folded and tucked and sorted. Like he's not giving in to the bad or messy habits he might have, like it's part of some overarching scheme of self-control. (Really, he's the _weirdest_ damned Sith she's ever met.) Her side of the place, on the other hand has belts and blasters and ammo and half-eaten ration bars thrown across every surface. He claims he finds her field pants hanging from the ceiling, one morning. She can't swear he's wrong about it either so instead of arguing with him, she makes a joke.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
There's a _lot_ of jokes. It's what she does and he keeps up, not half as quick or desperate or whatever it is that makes her brain work the way it does, but he gets it. He never laughs - she wonders occasionally if he has ever really laughed in his life – but he smiles and it _feels_ like laughter.  
  
  
\--  
  
He doesn't sleep much. Vette asks him once if it's a Sith thing or a warrior thing and he looks at her for a long time before he replies that perhaps it's neither.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
With him, there's no past. So many things that don't make sense so she _asks_ , can never really keep her mouth shut if she's curious, and he doesn't give her anything to go by. Something unthawed in him, something buried.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
After a long day out in the field, he makes sure she has enough to eat and drink. It takes a while before she actually tries the food he offers her and even longer before she drinks the water or wine he hands over (she knows a hundred subtle ways to poison drinks, not nearly half as many ways to poison food without leaving traces) and he notices, but doesn't mention it.  
  
She isn't sure why he doesn't send her to fetch food and when she asks, he shrugs. He's kneeling by his supply bag, typing something while he sorts through medical supplies and stims and he doesn't take his eyes off the task at hand as he speaks.  
  
"I promised you I wouldn't require a maid, didn't I?"  
  
Vette shakes her head. "You're a really hopeless Sith, you know that?"  
  
He looks up at her then, the corners of his mouth twitching somewhat and it strikes her suddenly that if he had been anyone else, if she had been alone in a sound-proof apartment on Dromund Kaas with anyone else his size with the fucking Force at their disposal, she would be terrified. And then dead. Or raped. Or both. But first she would have been really, gut-wrenchingly _terrified_. Now she leans against the wall, arms folded across her chest, a smirk playing on her lips.  
  
"Go get us something to eat," he says, nodding towards the exit. “That's an order.”  
  
"Or else?" She can't restrain herself, it's like dragging air down her lungs to throw herself into banters with this odd human. To find someone who gets her sense of humour, gets her means of escaping reality - even if he offered to buy her a ticket to some nice, relaxing planet out there, she thinks she would stay just for that. (He does offer to buy her a ticket as soon as they get off Korriban and he considers their agreement to collaborate _finished, unless you want to come along?_ She isn't sure what to say so she says nothing and then he rents a two bedroom apartment and here she is, _staying_ , because she still hasn't figured out an answer to that question.)  
  
"Well, the most immediate consequence is that we'll be really hungry." His voice is dry, the humour in it thin and crisp like newly formed ice.  
  
Vette laughs as she heads to the doorway. "I tremble with fear, my lord."  
  
  
  
\--  
  
After a long day out in the field, he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and grimaces slightly behind gritted teeth; the bracers he wears are just slightly too tightly fitted around his wrists, she can spot angry red lines on his pale skin. Even these parts of him are massive, thick with muscle and scar and flesh. It's like he's created not to have any weakness. An animal bred for war but then there's also these banal little injuries, softening some of the edges.

Her gaze lingers and she tells herself that it's not that weird, tells herself that it's a measurement of sorts, an evaluation of the potential danger. (He's stronger, she's faster, he's harder, she's smarter.) She's always been a survivor. It had surprised her that he hadn't sold her on Dromund Kaas but surprise doesn't forge loyalties and she still wouldn't trust him to have her back - or her front or any part in between.  
  
_Still_.  
  
Her gaze lingers.  
  
There's a small and sudden disruption in the air around them – some comm link shenanigans or the ship droid passing by, she can't tell and it doesn't matter – and he looks up, notices her eyes on him. For a moment she feels _caught_ but then she gives a curt nod.  
  
“Use some coconut gel on that,” she says, before she gets up and leaves.

  
  
  
  


 


	2. Ghosts

  


He's a boy, maybe six or seven, and the world falls into his head, his blood. Another boy screams when they clash against each other the way kids do, nothing is unusual about it, not until his fist makes a bruise and a gash on the other boy's cheek and Thomat's mind flares up like a fire; he groans like he's the one who's been hit because the boy's fear lands at the back of Thomat's tongue and it tastes bitter, tastes of ashes and pain and a universe that creeps inside him and _crumbles_.  
  
He's a boy, maybe ten, and he learns the names for everything, the purpose of nothing.  
  
He's a man, twenty-four, and he kills his fellow acolytes at the Sith Academy because it's the way of things, it's the way of the Sith. Kill or be killed and there's no room for anything else, no room for _him_ in all of these codes and displays of power. He's a coward, one who does not want to look into the heart of his own power - he imagines how it beats, a _heart_ , pumping dark secrets and strength into his body - or even at himself in the mirror, but he's a strong coward, a body full of steel and adrenaline. _I'm sorry_ , he thinks when they fall; their blood on his clothes when he undresses at night. He isn't sure he _is_ , but the thought slips away from him all the same.  
  
He's a man, twenty-four, and there's a Twi'lek girl in a slave collar who looks at him like he's nothing special and something cracks in him, a hitch that slows him down and something twisted and complicated that falls into his wide-open chest. _Where your heart would be, Sith._  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
He's a boy, maybe eight, and her name is Jaella. They gather stones and rubble and pretend it's ancient findings that will make them famous through the galaxy. There's a conflict, a fallout between his father and her mother. There are rumours but no answers. He never sees Jaella again. 

He's a boy, maybe fifteen, and the lines blur. He has trained with Koyl for more than half his life, has fought shoulder to shoulder through the initial training, watched their peers rise and fall; they have stolen shipments of hard liquor together, have fought for the attention of the same girls and cursed the same boring instruction vids, the same shitty titles the instructors want them to read. _We're going to be Sith_ , Koyl mocks. _Not librarians._ Thomats sees the attack coming from a mile away when it finally comes. It happens right before the final stage of training, that mythical, magical phase where it is said they decide which ones will leave for the Academy; he has expected it, feared it. He has always known he would win.   
  
He's a man, twenty-four, and in a noisy cantina in the middle of the Imperial Fleet while they're waiting for the next departure for Dromund Kaas, the girl with the slave collar stares at him like he's a lunatic when he doesn't object to removing her chains. Companions, he says, wondering what the fuck he even means, what the fuck he's thinking, what the actual _fuck_ he's doing.  
  
He's a man, twenty-four, and she's Vette. He's not certain she even likes him; he's fairly certain she's the only friend he has ever had.   
  


 


	3. Scorched earth (Balmorra)

  
  
Nothing like a little trench warfare to make you feel alive. Or afraid to die, at least. It's often the same thing anyway.  
  
"Brutal." She removes her glove to check her hand that feels broken but doesn't appear to be. They've been fighting all day and she's pretty exhausted from it all. “Better check if I still have all my parts.”  
  
Balmorra is like a wound around them, all bleeding edges and freshly healed injuries that they tear up with their boots and their weapons, over and over again. Her Sith _sharpen s_ in this place, straightens up and becomes all military like when he talks to high-ranking officers and blood-thirsty Sith Lords. Vette thinks it suits him in a strange way. He's pretty awful at being Sith, not nearly enough _grr_ in his body; he's slightly more at home receiving and giving commands but he doesn't salute anyone and she secretely loves it. All the _yes, sir, no, sir_ chafe inside her mind and make her uneasy, like these people wouldn't be capable of thinking for themselves even if they had to.  
  
Her Sith is a lot of crazy things but he's not a _minion_.   
  
He looks at her now, his ever-serious gaze travelling up and down her body as he mock-counts. “Two arms, two legs, one head. Looks like you're good to go.”  
  
“Well, thank you kindly then, my lord.” She bows, in that way he hates when people do. _Fawning fools._ It seems to fluster him a little bit when _she's_ the one who does it, and that makes her pleased. It's a cruel world, she needs every advantage she might possess and then some. _Even over him?_  
  
“Any time,” he says and he sounds like he's smiling.  
  
With an inward sigh she tucks her hand back inside her glove, wondering how much longer they are going to be out here before they call it a day. She'd never admit it if anyone asked but she's longing to sit down, wrap a blanket around herself and eat like she's never seen food before because it sure feels like she hasn't.  
  
"Hey, Vette?" he calls, strangely on cue (she doesn't think too much about the Force, or what the heck it means when they say that they can feel someone's fear or whatever because if she did she might never sleep again) and she looks at him over her shoulder. There's dirt on his face, streaks of sweat and blood and dirt in patterns down his cheeks and she wants to wipe it off, for some reason.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"The sergeant here is returning to the outpost. You want to go with him?"  
  
_Yes_.  
  
She glares at the battlefield ahead of them: the turrets that fire blindly, stirring up grass and dirt and the occasional enemy; the groups of soldiers hunched up in the trenches or leaning against barricades, that exhausted empty look in their eyes because at the end of the day they're just ordinary people trying not to get blown to pieces; the way they're needed to uphold this Empire, to keep it from crumbling to dust and ruin. And her Sith pal - _her_ Sith pal - in the middle of it, sweaty and tired just like her. He gets clumsy when he's wiped out, gets all shivery with Force power and careless with his blades.  
  
"Nah," Vette hears herself say. "I'm good."

 

 

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
Because he doesn't want to kill everyone who happens to stand in his way, he tries to offer other solutions. The look in people's eyes then - the doubting, distrustful _distance_ \- as though he's luring them into some intricate web of traps. As though subtle machinations rather than full-scale killing rampages are what Sith Lords are famous for. As though it doesn't matter that he's trying to be a different kind, forge another path.  
  
They could at least _pretend_ to be grateful, he thinks at times when he's tired from running Baras's errands and the back of his head aches with everything he tries not to remember. A lot of them are, of course, but sometimes the pressure on him outweighs any kind of rewarding result. _Cry me a river_ , Vette had replied when he mentioned it once. They haven't discussed it since.  
  
He makes a decision that wipes an informant's mind and marvels for a second at the blank state it renders, how visible it is when the kid looks into his eyes afterwards. Every mosaic of fear and regret just vanishing, each mistake undone, the molecules of terror cracking open. The opportunity to move on, truly move on, as another person entirely. _You jealous, Sith?_  
  
Vette is, she tells him as much and there are responses that stay inside him, a flurry of _questions_ but he bites down hard on them, forcing them quiet.

“Should I take that personally?” It's easy to joke with her, uncomplicated like very few things in his life; it's fragile underneath, a foundation built on tongue-in-cheek banter to cover up the way the galaxy has placed them far apart from each other, so they joke. He transforms his voice into someone else's, sounds haughty or absurd or any other stereotype they can think of and Vette laughs. Not effortlessly, perhaps not even _genuinely_ but it's laughter and he saves it in his memory. He can't recall ever having made someone laugh before; he can't make her laugh enough.  
  
She grins at him as they walk towards the speeder a few feet away. “Of course not. I'll never be able to forget you.”

 _Good_ , he thinks but doesn't say.  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
Vette likes to think that she knows all there is to know about escape.  
  
The plotting, the scheming, the preparations that pile up like garbage in your head until you've prepared so much you can barely move forward for all the preparations in your way.  
  
She has never been good at the actual escaping part - _not a stealthy bone in your body_ , Taunt would say sometimes - but she is really good with the planning. In her head she's always free, sneaking out of all the boundaries, no collar in the galaxy can rein her in, neither the Empire nor its enemies can wear her down. But in reality she curls her hands to fists and endures.   
  
This place, though. This ship that's probably got cams that are directly linked to Darth Baras and tech traps made with people exactly like Vette in mind but she's smarter now, smarter than she's ever been, fast and deadly and clever. This is the first time she thinks it would be possible to escape and actually get away.  
  
And she _stays_.  
  
"I don't like her," her Sith pal says under his breath, voice low and rough. They've left Darth Lachris and he has told her to govern Balmorra with mercy which is something they both know she's not going to do and Vette can almost taste his irritation in the air between them, follow its traces on his skin. _There's a difference between justice and bloody murder and if you cannot see it, perhaps you should see yourself out of this place?_ His voice in her memory, the threat dangling low in front of a terrified officer. “She's too clever for a Governor.”  
  
_To clever for a Sith, just like you._ She lets that thought remain unspoken.  
  
"So we're leaving, right?" Vette glances sideways at him. He's much taller than she is but his gaze always seems near, somehow. It's on her now as well, searching. "On to our next exercise in dominance and destruction."  
  
He makes a muffled sound that sounds like some combination of a snort and a cough.  
  
"Don't you know by now that I only dominate and destroy as a last resort?" His tone is light but if she squints she can spot a little trail of _hurt_ there. If someone told her a year ago that she'd end up hurting a Sith's frail ego by joking about his violent ways, she would have laughed until her stomach ached.  
  
"Of course." Vette lets her elbow bump into his side, playfully. "I keep forgetting."  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
"It is my duty, Master... meals... ratio... sufficiently nutritious..."  
  
Thomats listens with less than half an ear to the ship droid's monologue as he mentally sorts through the last holo from Baras. Balmorra is a dump but things have been reasonably clear-cut here, following protocol as much as any war can. He's fond of situations he can get a grasp on, less thrilled about being thrown heads first into new events, like this current objective. Nar Shaddaa. Not on the list of places he wants to see before he dies.  
  
"I think the droid is calling you fat," Vette summarizes, with that impossibly weird smirk on her face. It's like she's amused and reluctant about it but struggles not to be reluctant about it at all. She sits cross-legged in a chair, juggling some assorted items from the spaceport vendors - he's beginning to understand that she always gathers things, buying or looting or something in between, holding on to them like her life depended on it. At some point it probably did.  
  
"How observant." Thomats scratches the back of his neck and closes the inbox on his datapad.  
  
"I know, right." Vette holds out one of the packages in her lap. "I could have told you that. Hey, want some Balmorran snacks? To celebrate our dramatic exit.”  
  
She tosses a small package across the room.

He catches her gift in his palm and takes a closer look at it - it appears to be a fancy sort of nutrition bar. On Dromund Kaas she had told him she used to collect those wherever she travelled with her masters and he had wanted to ask if she did it to make sure she had food or because she has some sort of weird preference for nutrition bars. Her past intrigues him but there are layers of it - cold and painful ones, layers that rub against their present and leave marks – that holds him back.

“Tastes of cinnamon and... “ he winces, “womp rat?”  
  
Vette chuckles. “A treat. At least if you're drunk. Or starved.”  
  
“I'd rather have my sufficiently nutritious meals, thank you.”  
  
“Your loss.”  
  
"I'll survive somehow." Thomats tilts his head up to look at her, not able to hold back a smile.

 

 


	4. An army of one (Nar Shaddaa)

Nar Shaddaa is measured breaths and keeping your back straight, maintaining a cool head. It's the bright neon lights bleeding into your head when you stare at them too long, when you're trying to make them drown out the thoughts you don't want to think. It's spice, _everywhere_ , and slipping into the dimly-lit places along the promenades to watch live performances and steal while trying not to get caught. It's that pulsating, roaring fear of getting caught. Doesn't matter if you've done something or not, Nar Shaddaa _gets_ to you like that. Makes you feel part of the crime culture, part of the rich vein of corruption that runs deep among the slums and the towers.  
  
Setsyn – their contact here, for whatever crap Baras wants them to do – looks like she desperately wants to melt in here but Vette can tell she doesn't. The heavy beat of the Smuggler's Moon may appeal to her but it's not in her bloodstream, not part of her mind. It's not in Vette's Sith lord's mind either; he can't hide his glances at the shadiest corners of the industrial sector.  
  
This contact woman has a way of looking at them – at him - as though they ought to be flattered by her attention. Then, like she's asking for the direction to the nearest cantina, she asks if _Thomats, was it, my lord?_ wants to get to know her better once the mission is done.  
  
Vette almost snorts. Then she looks away because there's no real reason for her to snort at that kind of question and it suddenly seems stupid that she did. Or almost did. _Whatever_.  
  
“Get to know me better?” It's the Sith's voice and he sounds hilariously bored. “I think I know you well enough.”  
  
There's a light feeling in Vette's body at his reply. Light, _bright_. She looks at Setsyn again who's eyeing her now as though it's somehow Vette's fault that this odd Sith Lord doesn't want to bang random strangers.  
  
"Hey, Twi'lek, is he always like this?"  
  
Truth is of course that Vette has no idea. She has guesses (weird hopes under her tongue, slipping behind her more reasonable thoughts) and no clue whatsoever.  
  
"He's got really high standards," she says anyway because lack of info has never prevented her from having an opinion.  
  
There's a low chuckle, more of a _rumble_ , beside her and she doesn't have to glance in his direction to know he's laughing to himself.  
  
Now Nar Shaddaa is this, too, and it makes everything shift slightly around her.   
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Mostly, he thinks as they sit down in an nearly empty cantina and waves for drinks, this moon is too _clean_. It's filthy in almost every way, stinks of terror and doubt and cowardice, of Hutts and greedy crime lords but people clean up the blood or leave it in plain sight without consequence and refuse to feel shame. It's a strange sort of clean, one that creeps under your skin.  
  
Crime without purpose, without sense. He grimaces into the double shot of whiskey and wonders what his companion thinks of this place. He can't really tell, even if there are a million little signs marking her as a lot more familiar with Nar Shaddaa than he is, a million tiny markings in the way she carries herself here. She _knows_ things, truths set in her bones.  
  
 _She's stronger than you_ he thinks and it's not the first time. She's survived people like him all her life; he wants to talk to her about it but he can't find words for it, for those vast galaxies between them.  
  
Vette looks at him over the rim of her own drink – she's accepted them now, the things he buys for her, eats and drinks and doesn't seem to expect to end up dead for it.  
  
"You know I was a slave when I was a little girl. Before I got free.” Her hand curl around the glass even as she puts it back on the table, as though she's reluctant to leave it entirely. “Sort of full circle I guess."  
  
"Your slave collar has been removed," he points out, stupidly.  
  
It's not the right thing to say about it.  
  
What _do_ you say about it? Any of it? The images flash in his head sometimes, the pictures to her words. It's not something he wants to think about; at times it's _all_ he can think about in her presence. Is it sorrow? Is it guilt?  
  
"Right. I do appreciate the difference, believe me."  
  
"I didn't mean that you should be grateful." He says it very quietly, mutters it mostly to himself but she seems to catch it over the non-existent noise around them.   
  
She gives him a long, searching glance. There are words then, a stream of words about her past and he doesn't interrupt them, lets her speak until she seems to rein herself in and brush it off, whatever it was that made her talk.   
  
"All this while you were still a child?" he asks eventually, not even wanting to know the answer. There's such a low-key anger in him whenever he thinks about her past, those parts of it that are like furious little cuts, impossible to forget because they _hurt_ , won't let themselves be forgotten.   
  
"Yeah." Vette nods, then shrugs quickly. "Anyway, you know you've travelled a little too much when a Sith ship starts to feel like home."  
  
"This _is_ home."   
  
The way he says it, without thinking. Like the Force, just rushing through him, like a dream.   
  
The way he _means_ it.   
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
"Have you ever heard of Nok Drayen?" She asks him once, to divert his attention from questioning her about her criminal skills. ( _Don't admit too much, reveal just enough to paint yourself as useful._ Advice from someone else as stray echoes in her head.)  
  
"Yeah, I think so." He nods, trying to remember the details. "Huge power grab a while ago, right? He destroyed the Rath Cartel and the Vandelheim Combine?"  
  
Vette blinks, shakes off the impulse to say no, different guy because it's just so incredibly _weird_ to think of him that way.  
  
This is how she thinks of him: a hard gaze falling over her face, over every face in every crowd because he knew how to read people; an arrogant smile, rarely; a quit wit, _you've got to be faster than the other predator_ he tells her once and she is unsure of what to say so she laughs; the knowledge that anything can be overcome.   
  
She wonders how she will think of her Sith pal twenty years from now.  
  
"Most famous killer in the galaxy," she says. "And he set me free."  
  
A pirate prince at heart. Told all the slaves they could join up or go free, that he didn't want anyone forced to fight at his side. It's what her Sith would have done, too, she can picture it so easily: his large hands breaking the chains and that deep voice telling them to pick their own way forward. _Don't let anyone tell you who you are_. He had said that once, to someone else. He might as well have said it to the starved Twi'lek slave who crawled out of the ashes and picked up a blaster with no hesitation in her body. _I'm in_ , she had told Nok. It was all he had needed. It was all she had needed.   
  
"I'm sorry," her Sith says suddenly, his voice low and a little tight. He sounds angry.   
  
"Sorry for what?"  
  
"For what happened to you. All of it.” He sighs, like he's had anything to do with it. “It must have been hard."  
  
And Vette blinks, shuffles her impulses around – yes she _can_ do it if she wants to, she just doesn't _want_ to for the most part – until they have calmed. She doesn't want his pity; she deserves so much more than pity.  
  
"It was a long time ago anyway.” She looks over his shoulder at a group of people passing by, carrying on with their lives. “Let's get back to work, yeah?"

 

 

 


	5. Twin suns (Tatooine)

 

  
Tatooine makes Vette miss Korriban.  
  
It's not really the sand or the heat, she can deal with that. It's not the fricking wildlife either even if she'd prefer it if their next destination had plenty of warm, dry cantinas and no rampaging beasts in sight. Mostly, it's the fact that there's too much open space here in the desert, not enough places to hide. That's just never a good sign, not a good way for a place to be.  
  
“No?” Her Sith says when she mutters something about it as they stop for supplies outside Mos Anek. “Ask the Sand people and the Jawa.”  
  
“Not what I meant.” Vette picks up a pack of stims and scrutinizes it, mostly to have something to do. She's annoyingly restless here, _fretting_ , an unrest settling deep inside her body. It feels like hunger, like being starved to the bone.  
  
Her Sith glances sideways at her for a moment – something there at the bottom of those eyes recently, a little flicker of that unrest in him, too, she supposes. Things aren't exactly smooth for either of them and she's learned by now that having all that Sithy skills doesn't make you immune to being a person.  
  
“What did you mean then?” He sounds honest enough for her to hold back on the sarcasm, always so damn honest when he asks questions. It's so weird.  
  
“This planet is... I don't know. At least Korriban doesn't try to hide that it's a horrible place.”  
  
“That's certainly true,” he agrees after a moment's consideration. That way he has of _considering_ whatever pointless thing she blurts out, that way he always seems to process and analyse everything. Her Sith pal, the weird scholar with the Force shooting out from his hands. Or skin. Or wherever that power manifests itself. He knows the galaxy through the words of others, she thinks sometimes. Shows where all the fancy training gets you.  
  
Now he's being ripped out of his little Academy bubble and forced to _live_.  
  
She actually feels sorry for him, for the horrible kind of life he has now but probably never asked for. And it does some really strange, twisty things to her head, feeling sorry for someone like him but she pushes that strangeness away. _You haven't even met someone like him before._  
  
“I know,” she says and returns her attention to the stims because it makes her voice unfamiliar and raw to think about her Sith like that, like she's allowed him way too close.  
  
With a little shrug, she takes a step away. As if that would _help_.  
  
  
\--–  
  
  
Tatooine makes Vette miss Korriban.  
  
Her feet ache, her head feels heavy and thick with hunger and weariness and the cave around them is both damp and scorching hot at the same time. It smells _bad_ , a stench that creeps under her skin and reminds her of every horrible thing she has ever known.  
  
It's not that she expects to be spared from these excursions, it's not like she thinks her Sith cares all that much (except sometimes she doesthink that and that's so damn confusing she almost wishes she didn't, that _he_ didn't). It's just that she really, really could do without being showered in blood and gore on a daily basis. Her Sith adopts some new kind of tone with her here too, a tone that is both irritating and weirdly, obsessively fascinating. It's the way he looks at her, she concludes. Easier to tolerate crappy, clumsy comments that she supposes are meant as flirty when someone's looking at you like that, like you're important and pretty amazing. When _he's_ looking at you like that. (Even if he really does sound like a complete idiot.)  
  
They fight a sand demon right at the heart of its cave and every motion in there is a strain in her, a jab and a cut. It takes forever, no matter how many boosts and tricks they apply and she's drained from pretending to be okay, to not let anything show. Her Sith is exhausted, too, his power and lightsabers like flickering lights that look like they're about to go out every other second and Vette grinds her teeth, bites her lip and forces her hands to be steady around the blasters. _You can't have me_ , she thinks. _You can't have us. Can't have him_. It helps a little, she's always been good with mantras.  
  
They win, narrowly and she ought to celebrate perhaps but all she can think about is the stench of death, the sticky, awful stench that gets under her clothes and her skin and into her head. She can stand almost anything, take almost everything without as much as a grimace, but she truly hates it when she's soaked in her enemy's insides. It's just one of those _things_.  


Much as she hates showing her freaky sides to her Sith Lord friend, today she can't help but squirming even after the fight is done and her clothes are soaked in demon goo, her hands still trembling and her throat raw from exhaustion. It's a thin veil of disgust over everything, a constant shudder.  
  
He gives her a long glance; he looks tired, too, but unbroken. His broad neck has blood splatter in large patterns, his boots look like they need to be looked at by a technician, the rise and fall of his chest is still quick, hoarse. The familiarity of him suddenly hits her, the fact that in this strange place surrounded by strange creatures, he feels like kin. Maybe he feels it too, maybe that's why he doesn't stop looking at her.  
  
“It will be alright, Vette,” he says eventually.  
  
And his voice is so deep and dark and _kind_ that she's rendered speechless for several moments.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
“I'm not a murderer.” He's a boy, can no longer remember how old, and looks down at his hands: broad, pale, innocent. _Is_ he innocent? It seems a heavy, impossible word. The world blurs. He falls asleep hugging himself, hands clutching at the shirt he sleeps in, made sweaty by nightmares and those strands of his own force wrapped around everything, _everything_.  
  
“I'm not a murderer,” he tells the Sons of Palawa in the shadows beneath Tatooine's suns even if they won't actually believe him. They won't actually _believe_ him but they agree to work together, fight side by side and that is what matters. _All_ that matters. _Is it?_  
  
_I'm not a murderer_ , he thinks, the world swirling inside his head, round and round and round again as his reflection laughs darkly in there, too, dissolving them.  
  
_No, you're a pathetic worm.  
  
_ The light in him will be his downfall, the disease for which there is no cure except to give up, give in, give himself over to the forces that have always beckoned, _begged_. He used to think it made him strong that he's been able to resist them, to follow his own damned conviction but now the doubts are like chains around his neck, twisting and pulling. What point is there to walk the path of the Sith if you are only going to bring ruin, if all you can be is someone to be weeded out, destroyed before you crush everything in your way. _One day the darkness you reject will overwhelm you.  
  
_ Thomats shakes his head, shifts his weight.  
  
_No_.  
  
  
  
\--–  
  
  
  
The heat beats down on him relentlessly, scorches the top of his head and makes him feel discomfort in his own skin. He wasn't made for this kind of climate, these kinds of desert planets.  
  
This kind of war.  
  
_You want to be a scholar, don't you?_ Koyl's laughter back when they're training, his voice that is hard and amused at the same time. Nothing quite as offensive as being a scholar when you have the Force that connects you to every living thing, every beating heart and fluttering nerve around you. _Thomats the fearsome librarian._  
  
He leans back against the cool metal surface behind him where he sits on the sand, momentarily safe at one of the Empire's outposts. He wishes they had returned to the ship but night had fallen and Vette had expressed huge concerns about hunger and needing to repair her blasters and he's not looking to get them both killed just because he prefers to rest alone rather than cooped up with half of Tatooine.  
  
“Here.” Vette suddenly stands beside him, holding a nutrition bar. “Local flavour.”  
  
Thomats has to smile. “Local? What does that even mean? Krayt dragon?”  
  
“Yeah, probably.”  
  
“You haven't tasted it yourself?”  
  
“No way.” She slumps down on the ground, facing him. Her face is lit from behind by the merciless suns and she looks a bit tired even after hours of rest but the heat doesn't seem to battle her the way it does him, doesn't seem as intent on beating her to the ground. “I just collect them. Mostly.”  
  
“And offer them to me.” Thomats looks at her for a moment, not keen on looking away. He's become so used to her company, so very accustomed to having her around everywhere he goes that he doesn't know what he'd say now if she told him at the next spaceport that she wants to stop, catch a ship elsewhere. He wouldn't blame her but he'd _miss_ her.  
  
“Well yeah.” She flashes a quick grin. “You're so weird, you'd probably eat krayt dragons too.”  
  
“Only if I had killed them myself. Sith honour and all that.”  
  
Vette chuckles, low and under her breath.  
  
They sit together for a while, not speaking. Thomats studies the supposedly disgusting meal bar, then he studies Vette and she, in turn, seems to double or triple-check one of her weapons with a slightly concerned expression on her face. Just when he's about to ask if something is wrong with it she tucks it back into her belt and returns her attention to the crowd gathering by the medical droid nearby. Troops returning, troops going, mercs and traders exchanging favours and goods everywhere.  
  
“It was scary, what happened today,” she says suddenly, in a tone that he doesn't remember having heard before. “For you, I mean.”  
  
“It was definitely strange, even for us.” He doesn't want to tell her about the doubts, the voices, the wretched faults inside him. Even if the reflection in the desert eventually had claimed Thomats won, it hadn't felt like victory at all and now that torrent from before starts again if he thinks too deeply about it, those swirling fucking images of-  
  
_Stop_ _it_.  
  
Vette's gaze is a slow-burning fire under his skin, intrusive and endless and he looks away.  
  
“It's going to be alright,” she says then, the words balancing somewhere between a question and a statement.  
  
He's going to go with the latter.  
  
  



	6. Ties (Nar Shaddaa)

  


"You'll never guess what I've been doing," she blurts as soon as she spots her Sith in the corridor outside. Then she realises he probably _can_ venture a few guesses, but that she doesn't _want_ him to so she shakes her head before he's had time to say something weird and Sith-like. Well, Thomats-like, which isn't always the same thing. Pretty much never, to be fair. "In between jumps I've been checking holo frequencies and I found the old gang. They're on Nar Shaddaa!"

Her Sith gives her one of those evaluating stares as they speak, the particular one that makes her feel like a lab rat somewhere, the key to someone's strange-ass research project.

"Are you thinking of going back to your old life?" he asks then, because nobody asks as many questions as her Sith. It's his way of slipping out of bad situations and deadly traps; she wonders which category this falls under in his head.

"What? Are you worried I'll leave you?"

He looks at her like he might be, which makes her head spin so fast she can't even stay on the trail of thoughts. So she tells him about the gang instead, about Cada Bliss and the Star of Kala'unn and he keeps _looking_ at her and asks if Cada Bliss could be called their matchmaker. Which is, Vette knows by now, the way this Sith flirts. It's not pretty, but then neither is he. (Only occasionally, when he says something clever or makes her laugh or when his hand happens to brush against her back as they walk on shady streets, like he's trying to protect her even if he's the clumsy one who hasn't got a freaking clue how to handle spice dealers and dancers.)

" _Anyway_." She pushes away from the mess of these thoughts, rubs her hands on the leather pants she normally wears on the ship. "I have the coordinates. And a plan.”

He nods, business-like now. “Tell me where we're going and I'm with you.”

She had expected to be allowed a break to deal with her past. She hadn’t really dared to hope he’d go with her and play the game. The relief hits hard and fast and she can hear it in her own voice. “You're fantastic!”

He kind of _is_ ; it kind of terrifies her.

 

  


* * *

  
  


"What does family mean to you?” she asks him once, casually and with the bright hum of the ship around them. He's come to appreciate their vessel for that hum, the tech-soar that can almost drown other songs in his head.

 _Nothing_ he thinks but it's a lie; nothing wouldn't be able to leave an absence.

He doesn't remember what he answers her.

  


* * *

 

 

Seeing them again isn't _anything_ like it had played out in her head, before.

They're not the same as when she first met them; she's not the same as when they got separated from each other. _The planets are always turning_ as her Sith probably would say, trying to be all deep and profound. (She thinks he's actually really clever, freaking _brilliant_ , but wouldn't admit it unless someone pointed a blaster to her head. Maybe not even then. A girl's gotta have some pride.)

It's still good though. A warm thread of familiarity between them, a whole arsenal of knowing.

It had been a great run. Taking scumbags for everything they were worth, hitting the nightlife afterwards. A fast sort of existence riding around the galaxy with some sort of purpose - even if the Twi'lek pride got pretty muddled up with shiny tech and pretty bystanders and cool speeders and that weird sort of freedom that comes with having nothing and being on the road to nowhere.

They had been unstoppable, unbreakable.

Until Korriban, at least, but that's a different story.

Part of that story walks by her side here among what used to be her stand-in family and Vette keeps one eye on him all the time, wants to see what he makes of it, of them.

Taunt flirts with him of course. She's _Taunt_ and she shines like the stars, like a permanent invitation. Vette can't think of any reason someone would turn it down and that's a sudden snap to her system, a sharp nail along her spine.

"I've already got all the beautiful Twi'lek women I need, thanks," her Sith says; Vette's throat feels dry.

Later, Taunt's hand over Vette's as they sit behind at the table, watching the fat Twi'lek challenge the fat human in the art of downing weird shots that Flash keeps buying for them.   
  
"So you've found a place," she says and it's not a question so Vette doesn't answer.

  


* * *

 

  


"What does family mean to you?” she asks him once, casually, though he can tell she genuinely wants to know.

He doesn't remember what he answers her; perhaps he can't even make something up.

"Did you see they've got Corellian brandy-flavoured ration bars in the cantina over there?" Thomats asks her on Nar Shaddaa. There's night around them but dawn in their bodies that are full of food and drinks, full of life. He feels like he could sleep for a decade and wake up to a different galaxy.

"Ooh." Vette raises an eyebrow. "I've corrupted you, Sith."

"Yes." He attempts a tragic look though he suspects it would have been easier five whiskey shots ago. "Now I will restlessly haunt the fringe systems, always on the lookout for new meal bars for my collection."

She giggles, slaps a hand on his arm and steers him away from a crowd of yelling Rodians; he wonders, but doesn't want to ask, why she had chosen him over her old gang.

"What?" she asks when she catches him staring.

Thomats smiles, shakes his head. "Nothing."

And perhaps family is there in the things that can remain unnamed, those spaces between words.

  
  



	7. Iron fists (Alderaan)

  
  
There's a boy, short with dark hair and chubby hands clutching at his toys. He listens, always _listens_ like an animal in hiding, for the house to go still around him and the beats of it to take a softer shape, fade into a thudding kindness. He lives in a house among mountains and dreams about climbing them, wonders how they'd feel against the soles of his feet. When the house go quiet, he falls asleep and dream about flight.

There's a boy, taller now and angrier, staring back into his father's dark eyes. All cards are on the table; his hands, tugging at his sleeves, still shaking with the Force, the no-longer-buried thunder inside. His father grins, triumphant.

There's a boy, swallowed by codes and philosophies and promises that rest heavily all over the walls in his new surroundings, cold and dark fear spinning at the core of him.

 

\---

 

The holoterminal casts a blue-bright shadow across the floor as Baras speaks of the mission at hand. He speaks for a long while, takes his time to explain.

"Nomen Karr and Jaesa Willsam now know they cannot hide. It gnaws at the Master and will bring his prized Padawan to her knees."

Thomats can feel the conviction behind those words, the strength and power in them; he almost wishes they meant the same to him, almost wishes he could be as blinded to everything else but the roar of his own Force as the aspiring Siths he used to train with. _Your kin._ He can't, he isn't made that way.

"You certainly have a lot riding on that theory, Baras," he responds instead, putting another inch between himself and his Master. Step by step. _Accomplishing what, exactly?_

When the terminal goes silent Thomats remains standing next to it, rubbing his temples and willing his heart to stop beating so fast, stop thinking of itself as prey.

 

* * *

 

 

Alderaan makes her feel small. 

Everything's tall and towering here - the mountains and trees, the houses, even the wild fracking beasts seem to be much bigger than they have any right to be, really - and Vette walks different, as if she's trying to stretch herself out, reach for the cool skies ahead.

And everyone and their aunt is part of some ancient bloodline, part of a galaxy-old feud about ridiculous things like credits and... houses, she supposes. That seems to be what human nobility cares about. Protecting their stuff, waging wars, having slaves (most of them are actually servants, her Sith corrects her, sounding somewhat hurt) making grrrr-faces at each other.

"So, these people built until they ran out of room, huh?" she says when they walk like tiny bugs between the Important Places full of Important Humans.

"Huh?" Her Sith throws her a sideways glance like he's barely even noticed she's there before. "Yes, I suppose they did."

A Sith _should_ fit right in where there's civil war and power struggles and rebellions to put down but her Sith doesn't. He's stumbling about worse than usual here, a too-fat puzzle piece not even trying to fit into its tiny little place. Every edge scrapes against something else, like he's shuffling the earth around with each move. Vette can hear he's got the language for it, all the fancy words in his body suited for diplomacy; his smooth voice constructed for killing people and making it sound inevitable, like you're doing someone a favour.  
  
But there’s something _odd_ about him on this planet. It’s the harshness of the place, she supposes. The hard lines and the angry ground.

He agrees to put shock collars on rebelling nobility; she curls her hands into fists behind her back.

"I don't have much of a _choice_ ," he says in passing when he notices but he can put a spin to every other objective, can twist an order until it's turned on itself in confusion.

"If you cared enough maybe," Vette mutters and looks straight ahead, doesn't even want to see if he's looking at her or not, isn't sure she wants to.  
  
And then he defends a weird girl’s decision to Join a bunch of Killiks because it allegedly gives her peace, defends it like it’s the most logical thing in the world and it’s _her_ Sith again, completely.  
  
“‘ _We have tasted the gel and scented the egg chamber_ ’,” Vette quotes later, frowning. “What in the freaking stars does that even mean?”  
  
“I really don’t care,” her Sith says, levelly, but there’s an amused twitch to the corners of his mouth now. “Whatever makes you happy.”  
  
She shakes her head. “They taught you that at the Sith Academy?”  
  
His gaze lingers on her for a beat. “Perhaps it was you.”

 

\---

 

  
When they’ve been on Alderaan for half a lifetime and then some, he declares them done. _Apart from just one little mission_ , he adds and nods at the speeder nearby. And Vette comes along because apparently that’s what she does now, against all better judgment.  
  
“So, we still haven’t found that Jedi, huh?”  
  
She talks - faster than usual - to avoid looking down as her Sith steers them both up, up, up along the impossibly narrow paths of the mountain.  
  
“We will,” he replies without turning to face her. Small mercies, she thinks and stares into the back of his head where he’s all dark and swirly and smells of sweat, ship soap and _outdoors_ .  
  
“Not up there, though.”  
  
“No,” he agrees.  
  
The air is fresher up here, she’ll give him that. Once he stops the speeder at the highest point of the mountain, Vette takes a few steps and double-checks her armour for safety measures. She’s never liked heights. Her Sith on the other hand seems completely fine where he stands, right by the edge, looking down. _Can Sith fly?_  
  
It’s not until he’s turning around to walk towards her that she notices he’s removed his boots and walks around barefoot on the snow-covered ground. She stops and just stares and when he lifts his gaze to hers, a wide grin appears on his face.   
  
"I've always wanted to do that."  
  
"You are so weird." Vette can't help but grin, too. "You know that, right?"  
  
  
  


* * *

 

  
There's a Jedi Padawan and she's lowering her hands, altering her posture.  
  
“I have nothing to hide,” he says and for once it's true.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
There's a Jedi Padawan in a filthy place on Hutta, a girl who claims she can see through them all.  
  
Her Sith in front of her, inside of her weird Jedi-glow; his back is a long, terse line, his arms resting at his sides. She wonders if he's scared, if he ever is.   
  
“I see... mercy...and fairness and... even perhaps compassion."  
  
Vette watches, thinking _she_ could have told them that.

 


	8. The latest lord (Fury)

  


Even before all the turmoil and fuss with hunting down Jedi Masters across the galaxy, Thomats had known that a successful run would finally grant him the lord title Baras has been dangling in front of his eyes ever since Korriban. Certain things are endlessly predictable.   
  
“Only the most accomplished among us are named as lords of the Sith.”   
  
He had expected, perhaps, to care a little more for it, to _crave_ it. He doesn’t. It doesn't make him feel anything at all, like the very idea of it can't reach far enough inside him to provoke or excite.  _You think like a Jedi, you piece of filth_ but he shakes his head at that, too. Jedi are spineless creatures who rebel against nothing. His ambition runs deep but it’s twisted around other things, rooted in the many ways the Empire needs to change in order to survive. This is merely part of a game he despises.   
  
“Such a distinction means nothing to me,” he shrugs and tries not to feel the awkward strain in the air around him - Quinn’s jaw clenches as though he’s working hard at not displaying any visible reaction and Vette stifles a giggle - when that verdict falls. They’re tangibly confused, with some streaks of fear.   
  
“Wow.” Vette looks at him, arms folded across her chest. He wants to know her thoughts, wonders if he’ll ask her about it later, when they’re not surrounded by the rest of the crew.   
  
Stars, the crew. _His_ crew.

The crew on this starship who looks to him for answers and it's the strangest thing because he still doesn't know much about life; he doesn’t even know much about people and how they carry out their mostly meaningless existences. He knows the Force. And the Force offers you very little insight into politics and strategies for overturning corruption and misrule. Did his new apprentice sense that kind of half-hearted conviction in him? He doesn’t want to ask, hopes she never tells.  
  
“Congratulations, my lord.” Quinn sounds properly awed as the exemplary citizen he is, well-aware of the natural-born leaders and their titles. Thomats almost sneers to himself. Truth be told he’s open to the idea of hearing Quinn’s honest thoughts, as well, but he figures he’d only ever get posture. The lieutenant is all clever composure, smooth surfaces and carefully reined-in emotions - used to working with Sith, to treat daily life like a military manual - and his presence on the ship is a shivering shadow biding its time forever or waiting to explode. Thomats isn’t sure which one it is.   
  
“You two helped.” He flashes a brief smile to Vette who seems to be studying their latest crew member.   
  
“Not enough to get a generous stipend, huh?” Her voice is light; there’s a current of something else underneath.   
  
Quinn clears his throat. “Service is its own reward.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah” Vette replies. “What he said. Let me know if you’re opening a bottle of something nice later. I’ll show our resident Jedi to her quarters now.”     
  
He does open a bottle.   
  
And then another one.   
  
When he reaches the third bottle, Thomats realizes that Quinn still looks sober while Jaesa is asleep in her quarters - _where did Vette go_ ? - and he can feel his own drunkenness like a permanent tingle inside. Force users aren’t the best drinkers, he keeps forgetting. It just melts down into a strange mixture of unhinged powers, random flashes of force signatures and that blurry outline around everything in the galaxy, though he supposes the last part is the same for everyone.   
  
“Have you had the same drink all night, lieutenant?”   
  
“I have, my lord.”   
  
Numbers and stats might not agree particularly well with his being, but he understands them enough to grasp that this equation isn’t a favorable one. At least not for him.   
  
Groaning, Thomats puts his current serving of alcohol down and adjusts his shirt. It feels warm and suffocating, like a too-tight layer of skin. His body spins, or if it’s the ship. He never knows. And then, all of a sudden, he finds himself discussing matters he had sworn he wouldn’t be open about, discussing them with a fervor that can only mean he’s drunk beyond salvation.   
  
“We will be the _catalyst_ that ushers in a new paradigm for the galaxy,” he explains to Quinn. His voice is painstakingly slow, careful around the slippery words. Big words, too. Grandiose, even. Does he pass for relatively coherent? Does it matter?   
  
He says it one more time, just to be certain his point has been made.   
  
There’s a shadow of something sympathetic crossing Quinn’s features now. _Have I talked about this all night?  I have talked about this all night._  
  
“Indeed, my lord.”   
  
  
  


* * *

  


  


Her Sith is never a master of stealth but the hum of the ship and her own thoughts usually manage to block her senses well enough. Occasionally he even surprises her when he comes by to visit during transit or in between duties. It’s a habit. A weird one, at first, fresh out of that shared flat in Dromund Kaas where Vette had been left mostly to herself unless she sought him out. Then they were thrown into new adventures as shipmates and he had seemed kind of… lonely. Before she met him, she’d never have guessed that she’d end up in a situation where she’d be babysitting a Sith warrior, talking him through some disastrous mission or speculating about Sith Lords and their habits with him just to pass the time.   
  
And she’d never ever have guessed she’d be doing it for her own sake, as well.   
  
Tonight he threads as softly as a horde of Banthas.   
  
“Hey, I -” she turns around as she hears the heavy, decisive steps approach, then come to a halt nearby. “Oooh, you’re still _drunk_ !”   
  
He winces slightly. “I _wish_. I think.”   
  
Vette hides a grin. He looks so miserable she can’t laugh in his face though a giggle spreads inside at the sight of him. They had, at some point during the second bottle when she decided it was more than enough for her, discussed abstract Sith crap like Force movements and how the dark side works. Their resident Jedi had babbled for what felt like a very extended lifetime. Her Sith had downed drinks. The rest, as they say, is pretty frakking blurry. 

“You wanted to talk?”

“Yeah,” she says, wishing somehow that particular request would have ended up lost in his drunken ramblings, that he would have forgotten entirely. But he wouldn’t be the weird Sith he is if he had. “Nothing really. Just thinking about Nar Shaddaa and the old gang.”  
  
“Okay.” He waits; listens.

“When I saw Taunt flirting with you. I don't know." That's a lie. "It was weird. Not good-weird. Just weird-weird.”

She doesn't look up at him; her gaze is fixed to a spot on the floor, her heel circling a little jagged pattern that nobody else would notice but she does because that's Vette, full of odd details and observations. Like the fact that her Sith sort of _wobbles_ when he's uncomfortable. Shifting his weight, leaning right, leaning left, taking a few small steps. That sort of thing. The fact that he does it now is encouraging somehow. At least they stumble together.   
  
“Weird-weird,” he repeats.   
  
“Uh-huh.” She scratches her hand, looks down at it. “Don’t get all ‘oooh, drama’ about it, it’s just… _weird_. That’s all.”  
  
“Don’t worry. No other Twi’lek in the galaxy can turn my head like you do,” he says, quickly. _Too quickly?_  
  
“Ugh.” The remark lands in her chest like hot lava but Vette rolls her eyes. “You _need_ to stop taking relationship advice from freaky old holovids.”  
  
He gives her one of those smiles that feel like laughter and for a moment Vette is the one who wobbles.    
  
There’s this hollow sensation in her lately, resting behind her bones. A fear: she  _recognizes_ fear and this is definitely one but she can’t figure out where it comes from or how to shut it up.   
  
It’s the notion that she’s suddenly offered more than she’s ever had - a job, a place, a purpose, a new form of freedom, a hopeless, strange Sith lord and his displays of affection.   
  
It’s the notion of being vulnerable.     
  
“ _Why_ , though?” She hear her own voice sound much smaller than it is, than it should be.   
  
“Why?” Her Sith frowns.  
  
“Why me. I don’t get it. Really? I’m just… nothing special.” _No_ , she tells herself. Says it again, firm inner voice this time. _Grrrr_. _NO. Shape up_. “Okay, don’t answer that.”  
  
“Vette-”  
  
“No, let’s just go back to what we were doing.” She turns away from him fast, before she regrets the idea and then, holding her breath, she counts the steps as he leaves.   
  
It’s the notion of being vulnerable and knowing that you can’t afford it.  
  
  



	9. Front line (Taris)

 

The destruction of Taris beats darkly in everything as soon as they set foot outside the ship. It's a battered place that's been beaten to the ground over and over again and its whispers are whispers of torment and rage.

Force-wielding rakghouls in an abandoned power plant reactor. Sickness that stinks,  _ reeks  _ from every direction, from the ground itself. There’s this general impression that if you step in a puddle of something, it’s probably going to be either radioactive goo that will eat your brain up in a couple of days or a rare, badly researched disease that will turn you into a brain-eating husk. In general, Taris makes her want to protect her brain. And limbs.   
  
And heart, she thinks as they’re trapped in a freaking  _ reactor  _ and her pulse feels like thunder in her ears, heart thumping and screaming. She takes small steps, hands gripping the blasters in her belt; every time she swallows she can taste her own fear at the back of her throat. Beside her her Sith is working fast - not fast enough, not half as fast as Vette would have because  _ speed  _ isn’t his thing and yet somehow he’s put himself in charge of this mission and she is going to strangle him if he’s killing them.    
  
“The reactor will self-destruct in ten seconds,” the core helpfully informs them.    
  
She takes a deep breath, scratching the back of her neck. Thinks of good things like a mantra, the way she would way back when good things were hard to come by and the awful crap so endless: she’d pile up her treasures in her head, one by one, counting them. Sleeping in; blue buttermilk biscuits; running as fast as she can with Tivva tagging along, somewhere in the outskirts of an almost-forgotten childhood; Corellian brandy; hacking security tech with that intoxicating beat in her body, that rattle through her bones that comes from knowing she’ll succeed; the feel of having money that’s  _ hers _ ; freedom, this weird,  _ remarkable  _ freedom her Sith has brought into her world. 

Vette is getting pretty damn fed up with thinking she’s going to die.   
  
“Don’t worry,” her Sith mutters from his position, crouched a few steps away. “We’re not going to die.”  
  
Must be fracking great to have that kind of confidence. _Or lack of concern_ , a little voice in her head suggests, but she’d rather not think of it that way. It makes her nerves freeze.   
  
Afterwards, when they walk out of it like he promised, there’s a twitch in his face as she brushes her hand over his arm. A small gesture, merely a touch of her hand for a heartbeat and it seems to alter something in his composure.   
  
“Let’s get out of this dump,” he says hoarsely and Vette realises he, too, had been scared.   
  
It hits her like her own fear, deep and dark and trembling.   
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


  
  
He’s never quite understood battle.    
  
Odd coming from a Sith warrior - he is fully aware of that contradiction,  _ too  _ aware -  and there’s training and tutoring and large, seemingly  _ endless  _ collections of holos explaining both basics and more advanced warfare. He’s been subjected to it all, yet he cannot claim to understand war the way some do. It will never sit exactly right with him, there is no cavity in him that war will fill up, unlike some of the lords he’s seen, who  _ live  _ for it.    
  
Give him an opponent and he will likely defeat it. That part is in his body, his instincts.    
  
Give him a handful of operatives and an objective and he will scrape up enough wit to make sensible choices but only barely, only because he is not, by any means, a fool. He’s not a soldier, will never completely follow military strategy without yawning or having to look something up afterwards and he can’t see how this fundamental fact will ever change.    
  
What he does know is this: they’re at war and they can definitely not afford one, regardless of what people like Baras pretend. They’re at war and both sides are ill-equipped, unprepared and grasping at straws and here on Taris they are hoping to clutch one. Or prevent the Republic from doing so.    
  
The largest scale assault he’s ever undertaken and Thomats tries to look forward to it, tries to channel emotions and prepare properly but it’s fruitless. While fighting itself gives him chills of pure pleasure,  _ planning  _ a fight never does and this sort of planning is the worst kind - the kind he is unskilled at.    
  
“Quinn will coordinate from the base, and you will lead the front line offensive,” Baras tells him via holo.  “Beyond that, decide how to assign your men.”   
  
Thomats lowers his shoulders and turns around. At least this will give him a chance to keep Vette safe, away from the line of fire.  _ And this is why you are no general, Thomats the librarian.  _ _  
_

It’s a waste, blowing this Republic war effort up.    
  
A waste, and he’s not wasteful. His nature tells him to salvage things and put them to use, not put a lightsaber in them and let them break in a billion useless pieces. He has tried to convince the masterminds behind Project Siantide to transfer their work to the Empire. He has tried to lure and motivate both good and mediocre fighters to their side out of mercy, certainly, but also out of pure pragmatism.    
  
But Baras isn’t pragmatic. He’d probably like to think he is but he is not.   
  
So Thomats goes to war on Taris, a planet barely scraping by as it is, and it’s a  _ waste  _ and a victory for those who count.    
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
A restless night has fallen when they return to the time-vacuum of the Fury where external time zones matter so very little. Before he was selected at Korriban to become whatever it is he is now, he had never been ship-bound like this, part of micro-galaxy of his own. Never before had he given up day and night in favour of living in a comfortable hyperspace bubble; now that he has become used to constant flight he isn’t certain he would even know how to stop. Perhaps he will never have to.    
  
Fury is home now, always waiting there with a steady flow of kolto and more or less edible rations.    
  
With Vette, recuperating on her own with a small stack of medpacks and some Holonet. He’s learned that she can spend endless amount of transit time on it, doing research and trying to crack the security of various channels.  _ Because it’s fun _ , she told him when he asked why.  _ And occasionally a goldmine. _ Thomats doesn’t often ask what she finds, doesn’t really want to know in case he’d need to do something about it.    
  
“I come bearing gifts,” he says now, holding out a box for her.    
  
For a moment she’s completely quiet, her eyes widening. “Gifts?”   
  
He nods for somewhat unnecessary emphasis.“Gifts.”   
  
“Not a serenading droid again, I hope.” She’s regained her composure, grins at him as she reaches for his offer. “Oooh, cookies!”   
  
“Buttermilk biscuits,” he states, not without a tinge of pride in his voice. It had required some nagging and a subtle threat to have this particular form of baked goods delivered to the Fury and he’s certain it had caused a few raised eyebrows, as well. Not the typical ingredient in a traditional Sith ravel, he assumes. Then again, the idea of being known to the galaxy as the Sith lord who binge eats buttermilk biscuits is somewhat amusing. He wouldn’t  _ mind  _ and it’s bound to give Baras a wrath-related ulcer.    
  
“And for the record: the droid was merely out of curiosity. I wanted to see how it worked.”   
  
Not a complete truth; they both know it.   
  
“Right.” Vette laughs, mostly to herself, probably remembering the noise that droid had made when Thomats had attempted to shut it down. Eventually it had ended up outside the ship after a brief serenade to the airlock. “And what’s the occasion for these then?”   
  
He takes a seat beside her wondering if he’ll ever master the art of explaining to her how he thinks -  _ feels  _ \- about what goes on between them. How she’s this oddly integral part of his life by now and how it’s both a comfort and a distress, these two sentiments all tangled up in each other in his head.    
  
“You mentioned them,” he says because she did and he doesn’t know how to tell her the rest of it.    
  
Something passes over Vette’s face. A shade of embarrassment, he thinks. She dislikes being considered emotional as though it’s a shame, a weakness she must repress and stifle until it no longer belongs to her. That softness that no hardships can completely crack - it’s one of the things he loves about her, one of the sources of light on this ship.  _ Yield to it _ , he wants to say.  _ Please.  _   
  
She takes a bite of one of the biscuits before she speaks again. “Did I count my favourite things loud before? In the reactor?”   
  
“A little bit, yes.”   
  
He had tried to memorize them but the turmoil of it all made it impossible. Some day, he promises himself. Some day he will see that he remembers.    
  
“Bad habit.” She takes another cookie, having more or less inhaled the first one. “I always get chatty when I’m about to die.”   
  
“You’re not going to die, Vette.” He places his hand over hers, quickly, then removes it again. There are so many boundaries around her and he doesn’t want to  _ intrude _ , though part of him can hardly think of anything he’d like more than that. “I have your back. As you have mine, it seems. Quinn was impressed with how you handled those traps.”   
  
“Yeah.” A low chuckle. He can tell that she’s pleased with herself - and with good reason.    
  
Thomats smiles, leaning back in his seat for a while. There’s a frenetic activity on the ship, an instant course set for Quesh and his head is full of thoughts and plans, endless streams of them spinning round and round. But in here, right now, there is peace.    
  
Outside in the corridor he can hear Jaesa and the ship droid converse about ship safety and as the droid starts performing a monologue about the escape pods, Vette and Thomats have another biscuit in comfortable silence.    
  
  
  



	10. Home in motion (various)

He’s a boy, or a little more than that; he’s growing tall as the snow falls over them.    
  
He’s a boy and there’s an accident -  _ incident  _ \- that leaves him unwell for a long time, that confines him to a bed and a tank, humming kolto into his veins like an artificial lung. The medics explain in great detail the cybernetics that have saved him - explains them to him, to his parents, to the instructors that will make him cultivate his Force sensitivity enough to be  _ chosen _ .    
  
He’s a boy and he’s asleep for a long time, an unnatural kind of sleep, watched over by medics and their aids.    
  
Nobody is there when he wakes up.    
  
  
  
*   
  
  
  
“So,” Vette ventures while they’re on course for Quesh, going through their equipment and taking stock of inventories. Not that they can possibly restock anything where they’re going. Except maybe for poisons. And goo. Which, most likely, is what the Empire would want. You can never have too much poison. “I’ve been thinking about this. You and me. Us. That thing.”   
  
“That thing, huh? Stars, you are a true romantic.” Thomats shoots her a glance over his holopad, the corners of his mouth twitching. Not that  _ he’s  _ much better at it, Vette thinks. He might use fancier words and he does have that air of someone who’s used to instructing and coercing and - even if he wouldn’t admit it - threatening his way around the galaxy. But he’s more unintentionally funny than anything else, definitely more funny than seductive, if that’s what he aims for. She never knows. Possibly he doesn’t, either.    
  
“Always hilarious.” Her voice comes out as slightly hurt, she thinks she might be and he seems to notice because his face goes still, all solemn.    
  
“I apologise, what did you want to say?”   
  
She inhales. “I don’t know. It’s just. Why me? You’re a super powerful Sith Lord who could have anything he wants. And you choose me. A former slave and a thief.”   
  
“You make it sound like I’ve purchased a speeder,” he says, then he’s quiet for a moment, watching her. “Weighing pros and cons of different brands. It’s not like that, Vette.”   
  
“What’s it like then?” She really wants to  _ know _ . It’s a painfully awkward conversation to have, every word in it makes her cringe inwardly but these are matters people discuss, she’s fairly certain of it.    
  
He frowns, thinking for a moment. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t  _ know _ . I  _ like  _ you. Better than anyone in this galaxy. Is that an explanation?”   
  
Vette shakes her head too, more in disbelief than in disagreement. Then she turns her face towards him and grins.    
  
“It made me speechless, at least.”   
  
“See, that is quite the accomplishment then.”   
  
“Watch it, Sith.”   
  
  
  
*   
  
  
  
Vette is good at the art of missing.    
  
Things, people, pasts, the ghosts of it all come together in her mind and she picks through it, habitually, organising her feelings around it. It would be crazy to miss it all at once.  _ Devastating  _ and she’s all about survival.     
  
Mostly she misses Tivva.    
  
There’s still a gap in here where her sister used to be, a  _ gap  _ like those who took her also took part of Vette and carried it wherever they carried Tivva.  _ Wherever _ , Vette thinks sometimes and feels frozen in ice. Slavery, prostitution, death. The galaxy is a horrible fucked-up place for a lonely Twi’lek girl.    
  
There’s a gap and she tries to breach it with searches and intel, tries incessantly over the years. When she can. Being in a cage with a collar can severely limit your options. Now, though, she feels like she’s been handed all the power in the known space and beyond some days and when she thinks about it that way she works even harder at locating her sister because what good would all that power be if she can’t even find Tivva with it?   
  
“My memories are so old, I remember having memories more than I remember the actual events. You know? Did that make any sense?”   
  
She tries to talk about it with her Sith but he’s even more fumbling than usual when it comes to family matters. That kind of topic reduces him to weird tropes and advice he seems to have picked up somewhere along the way. Maybe they have classes at the Sith Academy.    
  
“We can talk about it,” he offers all the same. “Sometimes that helps.”   
  
Vette sighs. “I guess. I, uh, some time I will have to do something more than talk, I suppose.”   
  
“What was she like, your sister?”   
  
He’s looking intently at her, very obviously waiting for some big tale about happy childhood memories or whatever but Vette has nothing like that to share with him. Truth is she has stopped remembering most of it. Beyond the info she’s stored into her brain, reserved for when she allows herself to miss them, she has tried to let go of childhood games and the taste of food their mother used to cook.    
  
“So here’s the thing: I don’t know. She was ten or so when we last met.”   
  
“You haven’t been able to locate her at all?”   
  
Vette averts her eyes, just slightly, just for a second. “No.”   
  
Some days she wonders if that’s not just a very convenient lie she tells herself. An excuse, a cover for her deep-rooted fear of looking for her family and find nothing. Or find them dead, or having been subjected to fates worse than that.    
  
She clears her throat, adjusts her jacket. “Okay, enough of this. Moving along.”   
  
Thomats’ gaze on her lingers.    
  


  
  


*   
  
  
Quesh is just as awful as she thought it would be and then some. It is, by all accounts, even worse than Taris and probably even more deadly what with the tropical climate heating everything up.     
  
Her Sith kneels on the ground, spitting dirt from his mouth.    
  
“Hey,” Vette says under her breath, one hand squeezing his massive shoulder. The muscle and flesh rumble against her palm, like a volcano about to erupt but she remains, utterly unafraid. “Need a medpack?”    
  
He shakes his head; she lets her hand remain where it is until he gets to his feet again. The admiral they met before had called him a blind obedient lapdog and the words linger, no matter how bitterly ironic they are. Vette knows no one who is less of a lapdog than her weird Sith.    
  
They’re being set-up, betrayed. It’s not even until they’re back on the Fury again that Vette realises she’s thinking  _ we, _ is thinking _ they  _ and it makes her want to wash her hands but also kind of not.    
  
  
  
  
*   
  
  
  
“You wanted to talk?”    
  
Her Sith stands in her cabin again, looking at her. He has a way of just standing around that makes people -  _ her  _ at least but she might not be the best judge when it comes to him - think he’s all scary and stern, all grrrr-mode. When he isn’t. That scary stuff is just part of him, no effort required.   
  
She’d love to learn the trick. All things considered it would be more fair if Twi’lek women had that skill, rather than fat and tall human men who also happen to be powerful Sith lords. That just seems wasteful.    
  
“Yeah.” Vette looks him over, frowning when she’s trying to wrap her head around everything that seems to go on now, with the Sithy types in Dromund Kaas and the Sithy types on the Dark Council. She’s really not one for politics and she won’t even begin to try and understand every weird feud that happens between force users in the Empire but some basic knowledge, she’s come to realise, would probably be good. It would work as survival skills if nothing else.    
  
“As long as you do not wish to discuss Sith politics,” he says and Vette gets more convinced by the hour that he can read her mind. Or at least her emotions. “Or Hoth. I don’t know the first thing about Hoth.”   
  
That’s where they’re headed and Vette can’t claim she’s overly thrilled about it.    
  
“Nobody does,” she replies. “Seems like the sort of planet people actively want to ignore.”    
  
He smiles a little. “I believe Quinn’s exact words were ‘it chills my bones just to be in orbit above this frigid planet’”   
  
Vette smiles back, making a mental note. Teasing Quinn is one of life’s greatest joys aboard the Fury, there’s no denying that and every bit of leverage she can gain over him is a treasure. It passes the time and keeps her on edge.    
  
“Anyway,” she rubs her nose and looks away for a bit. “I’ve been doing some research. Some more of it, that is. I wanna hire a tracker to find my family. Paying for it myself, of course. I’ve got some spare credits.”   
  
Her Sith nods, waiting. That thing, too, makes him freakishly imposing. How he sort of just  _ waits  _ for stuff to fall into place around him rather than scurrying about worrying or trying to fix things like she would. She’s not sure if it’s a Force thing or a personality thing but either way it makes her jealous.    
  
“I just… need to borrow the Imperial data files on board,” she adds. “That okay?”   
  
He exhales. Does he look  _ relieved _ ? What conclusion did he expect her to reach?  _ Stars _ , she thinks, there are so many things she wants to ask him all the time and so few questions that actually come out of her mouth and instead they remain in her head, a flurry of weird Sith-related thoughts and fragments, keeping her awake some nights.    
  
“Of course, Vette,” he says, voice low and soft. The kind of voice that makes her weak in her knees. “Whatever I can do to help.”   
  
  
*

  
  
He’s a Sith Lord, created for war.    
  
Around him the galaxy burns and bleeds and he might try to shake it off like one shakes off a dream or a nightmare but he can’t run from this. When the galaxy burns he burns. When the galaxy bleeds, it’s his blood, too.    
  
There’s poison in it after Quesh, a potent, lingering kind that quietly eats him from the inside. Jaesa assures him - after a long debate with the ship’s medical droids-  it’s easily curable and Quinn procures the antidote.   
  
Thomats sleeps and meditates. Meditates and sleeps, hiding in the Force.    
  
When he wakes up, Vette sits by his bedside, immersed in her holopad but as his hand brushes over her shoulder, she looks up and smiles. 


	11. Sith on Ice (Hoth)

“Remind me again what we’re doing here,” Vette mutters, stepping around frantically outside the outpost, trying to keep herself warm. Or well, technically speaking she  _ is _ . Reasonably warm, at least. Suits and pastes and whatnot have seen to that but none of that stuff can ever really get to the bottom of that feeling of freezing, of being chilled to the core from walking around in a big block of frakking ice.    
  
Stars, she  _ hates  _ ice.    
  
“You hate the desert too,” her Sith reminds her. He kneels on the ground beside his lightsaber, hands working on some elaborate detail near the hilt. Seems like a pretty piece of ornament to her, but you never know with Sith. It might just as well be some super secret Force button that will be the one thing that stands between the two of them and certain death. End-of-all-existence-scenarios seem pretty likely on a planet like this.    
  
“Yeah. What’s wrong with nice, climate-controlled cities?”   
  
“I agree.” The corners of his mouth turn upwards, just a little, just enough for her belly to flop around.  _ Flop _ . The same way it flops when he claims all these weird things about her, about  _ them _ , and Vette has no place left to run and merely stands there  _ breathing _ . “Ecosystems be damned.”   
  
“You think I’m silly.”   
  
“Never.” He is finished with his weapon now and rises to his feet. Slowly as usual and she can’t help but wonder if he does that deliberately, with some kind of  _ flair  _ that’s deliberate. Gradually unfolding himself until he stands there like a massive weapon, like the towering Sith Lord he is to everyone but Vette, apparently, who seems to have lost her mind when it comes to him. “I’m already imagining a warm bath once we’re done here.”   
  
Vette tries  _ not  _ to imagine him taking a warm bath as they begin walking to the speeder. “I’m thinking hard liquor.”    
  
Her Sith makes a little sound at the back of his throat. “Mm, who says we can’t have both?”   
  
“I expect this now, you know.”   
  
“Hard liquor in a bath?” He scrunches up his mouth a bit, raises an eyebrow teasingly. “I’ll see to that.”   
  
Around them, Hoth  _ towers  _ and Vette can’t really forget what they’re doing here - looking for a Jedi who’s in turn looking for a super weapon - because she’s reminded at every turn that they’re not just scouting for scrap metal to sell or something. If she’d been in charge they’d be plundering the derelict starships that are said to have crashed here ages and ages ago. Full of tech and treasure. She had asked her Sith if they could make a stop - _ just looking, double promise _ \- and he had muttered something about if they have time, then maybe. It means no, but he’s trying to be all generous about it so Vette is trying, too.    
  
When he quickly lets one of his arms rest around her shoulder right before they hop on the speeder and then gives her one of those private little smiles -  _ it’s going to be okay, just wait and see _ \- it’s not that hard to be generous about him.    
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
The Force feels different on Hoth.    
  
Stronger and weaker at the same time, as if it’s been torn apart and patched together like a tapestry of power with weak stretches, parts where the seams aren’t quite tight, others where he’s nearly floored with its magnitude. He meditates and breathes, tries to find the heart of the strength beneath the heavy layers of frost, tries to mend it or tear it apart but neither works as expected.    
  
It’s troubling.  _ All  _ of it, all of the time, but mostly the fact that he knows whatever scheme that Baras is running, they’re one step behind. The game moves forward and Thomats is  _ frozen _ .    
  
Everything spins around him - the bloodthirsty Talz who’s assigned himself to serve on the Fury, the pirates and their feuds, the many pitfalls of the bloody planet they’re on - and he stands in a cave, looking at Master Wyellett.    
  
There’s a thick, dark emotion rising and it takes a while for Thomats to realize it’s jealousy. Exhausted jealousy tangling around his thoughts, burning through his body. The old fool is trapping himself with the Force in a cave and Thomats wishes they could switch places. Not for long, but the desire still weighs him down,  _ hammers  _ through his head and heart. He’s so damn tired of fighting. Of balance. Of Darths and Lords and Empires. He’s made for it,  _ bred  _ for it, but stars, he wishes he could just turn his back and walk away. Or remain here where the Force is clear and sharp.    
  
“Then save yourself,” Master Wyellett says and Thomats isn’t sure what he means at first. “Leave this place before the ceiling crashes down.”    
  
Vette exhales behind him; he looks at her to ground himself in his own reality and she looks back at him, blinking.    
  
Then she takes his hand and they run for their lives.    
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
“Is there a celebration?”   
  
Vette looks up. Jaesa stands in the doorway, arms folded over her chest as she studies the drink in Vette’s hand. Traces of the bath still on her skin, a faint scent of fruits and flowers mingling with the usual weirdly neutral ship smells.   
  
“Our Sith owed me.” She grins. “That’s all.”  
  
“I… see.”  
  
Jaesa is always so nervous, Vette thinks. She seems to think she’s hiding it but it shows, especially around Captain Boredom and Pierce but then again, most clever girls would be twitchy around them. Mind-reading girls even more so, Vette imagines, and shudders at the idea. _Powerful_ , her Sith had said once. _More so than she even knows._ _A force to be reckoned with._ _  
_  
“For dragging me down planetside,” Vette clarifies. “I had some objections to that plan.”  
  
It’s never clear to her just what the rest of the crew make of her Sith. Or of Vette. And it’s not like she’s awake at night _caring_ about it but there are days when she’d like to point stuff out. Clean the air. Whatever you’d call it. Explain that it’s not like _that_ , not what they think, nothing at _all._  
  
 _Except that’s not true._  
  
“Yes, I can see why.” Jaesa’s expression eases up a little.   
  
Vette stretches out in her chair, moving her feet and flexing her shoulders. Her system has thawed, everything feels alright again and the drink helps her forget the nastier bits of Hoth.   
  
“You want one, too?” She nods towards her glass, then looks up at her visitor.   
  
“Uh… I shouldn’t-”  
  
“Come on,” Vette interrupts. “No poison in my drinks. Promise.”  
  
“It’s not that, but I’m on duty. Or technically I _will_ be, once we arrive in Kaas City.”   
  
As if anyone in their right mind wouldn’t feel on duty in Kaas City, Vette thinks but doesn’t say. Every time she as much as hears about Dromund fucking Kaas, she can feel the outlines of her slave collar return, can feel them clamp down hard around her throat. _Dragging_ her back to a place she can’t return to now, if she ever could. _Can’t_ because she’s been given this and you don’t trade a sweet place like this one for just about anything. Even if you’re stumbling about among pirates in eternal ice and snow sometimes.   
  
Or breathe the foul air on Quesh.   
  
Or visit all kinds of impossible, doomed battlefields, or-  
  
 _Still better than what you had before, Ce’na._  
  
“That’s hours away,” she says and reaches for another glass. If anyone needs a drink, besides Vette and possibly Captain Boredom, it’s Jaesa Willsaam. Maybe it will help her lower those shoulders and crack a smile. Even the Jedi smile on occasion. Or so Vette has heard. “Here, just one drink.”  
  
Jaesa makes a sound that gets caught somewhere between a sigh and a snort, but after much deliberation she sits down. Carefully, at the very edge of the seat as if Vette has made a trap there and the Jedi is bait. Vette should be the scared one, if anything. She can’t read minds or force-choke people. All _she_ has is a knack for surviving and for slicing her way out of various prisons that people seem frakking eager to throw her into.   
  
But Vette knows the power of fear and Jaesa is _afraid_.   
  
_He is, too,_ she thinks but doesn’t say.   
  
“Thanks.” Jaesa looks at the glass in her hand for a long moment, then she takes a mouthful. Vette offers an encouraging smile, feeling a bit like a mother trying to get her kid to eat something. _Be a good Jedi and drink up. One sip for our weird Sith Lord, one sip for me._ “Whoah. Strong.” __  
  
Vette chuckles. “Just drink it, Willsaam.”  



	12. Power play (Dromund Kaas)

“How would you like to face off against one of the twelve most powerful Sith in the galaxy?”   
  
Thomats looks at a point in the wall behind Baras, right above his left shoulder.  _ I’d rather have a nice meal and a good night’s sleep. And your head on a spike.  _   
  
“Right,” he says instead, as if there was ever a possibility of buying himself some time in this power play that’s been staged for so long he can barely even fathom  _ that  _ bit. Even if he could grasp the dynamics and schemes behind everything, there is no way he would be able to talk himself out of this. “What’s stopping you from doing it yourself?”    
  
He knows the answer already, but with Baras there’s always that defiant inner voice fighting itself out of him.  _ A most insolent, ridiculous child _ one of the tutors at Korriban had snapped at him once. Thomats can’t even recall what silly retort he had found back then but he remembers the pain; he carries a scar on his lower back to remind him.    
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
The Nexus room cantina smells of spiced nerf milk and too many bodies; it makes his mind scatter and split into a galaxy map of disconnected little dots. The holo dancers upstairs flicker in the corner of his eye and he turns around so he doesn't have to be distracted.

_ We ascend together _ Baras echoes in his head. It’s not a reassuring thought. 

Thomats waves to the bartender to refill his rather pleasant but overly sweet drink.

”You hungry?” Vette asks and slumps down beside him. Her scent swallows the cantina smell for a beat and he doesn't want to talk or move, just sit there and rest surrounded by it, by _her_. ”I could eat a whole Bantha.”  

”Even Bantha flavoured ration bars?” he asks, trying to keep up with her light tone as usual. And as usual, he's not certain he is even capable of that kind of manner, that sort of outlook on life. Or if she is, truth be told. Stars, he’s feeling  _ blurry _ .    
  
”Anything, I guess.” She leans her head in her hand, leaning slightly to the side to be able to look him in the eyes. A twist to her gaze tonight, a hollow sound around her. ”Hey, you okay?”

Thomats glares into his half-empty glass. ”Excellent.” 

”Right.” Vette nods. Her hand darts from beneath the table to rest on his, her palm against his knuckles. It’s warm and dry and he wants to hold it there with his free hand, wants to tie them together in any way he can. “It’s been a hopeless day.”   
  
That’s one way of putting it. Fighting through the compound, the Force bouncing off the high walls and soaring between the guards and the high-ranking officers they’re protecting. Battling Darth Venegean who had, Thomats must admit, tempted him. For a while he had almost expected the man to give him an offer, to convince him to leave Baras and join forces with Venegean and Thomats would have said yes. For a few seconds, at least, he would have said  _ yes _ . And regretted it, aggressively. Freedom is true power and there’s no freedom to be found in the games of Dromund Kaas.    
  
Vette rubs her hand over his a little harder, as if trying to return his thoughts to her. He lets out a deep breath and looks at her.    
  
“Did the kolto help, Vette?”    
  
“Oh, yeah.” She had been hit by Venegean’s wrath a couple of times and Thomats had wanted to carry her out of the room afterwards but she had, of course, refused.  _ Not a kid, Sith.  _ “I’m fine.”

“Then why do you look at me like you want to tell me something?”   
  
“Oh. Cause I do.” A flickering little smile. “I just… didn’t know if you had time. If we had time.”  
  
He nods towards the drink and gestures vaguely at the holo dancers and the crowd by the jukebox switching the track to Yesterday’s Jawa.   
  
“I’m having drinks, Vette. Do I look busy?”  
  
“With you Sith types, I never know.”   
  
_You know me_ , he wants to protest but he can’t bring himself to sound that whiny. Like a spoiled little brat.    
  
“Talk to me,” he says instead. “Please.”  
  
Vette sits upright, removing her hand from his. It leaves an absence, the humid air of the cantina makes his skin feel clammy and cold at the same time. As though his entire body still recovers from the fighting, rage and adrenaline rushing through his veins, pushing against his boundaries.   
  
“Okay,” she says. “Here goes. Maybe you didn’t think I could do this, but I did. A Kubaz tracker named Krata found my sister Tivva!”   
  
“That’s wonderful news, Vette.”  
  
“You think?” That hitch in her voice again, as always when he manages to surprise her though he shouldn’t.   
  
“Of course. Shall we go then?”  
  
“ _Now_?” Her face is still in some expression of bewilderment he’s never going to get tired of seeing.   
  
“No time like the present. Baras is needy, he’ll be popping in with new requests before long. Better seize the moment.”  
  
She flings her arms around his neck and despite the public setting Thomats allows himself to hug her back, to rest his hands along her spine. Everything about her makes him want to do so much more than hug her and yet at the same time it never feels they manage to grab hold of a good moment for it, never find a time to dig through all the layers of power and want and confusion and _stars you fuck like a librarian, too, don’t you?_   
  
“You are the _best_ ,” she says with her mouth against the thick fabric of his jacket and the heat from it pools inside, like artificial sunshine in this gloomy bloody city. He releases himself from the embrace and finishes his drink. Like it was nothing, what they just did. Like he’s not a victorious Sith Lord revelling in his recent glory.   
  
“Just looking for any excuse to leave this place,” he says and gets to his feet.   
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
“ _ Ce’na _ .”    
  
The name burns, but Vette doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything apart from standing here with a grin on her face because it’s Tivva and she’s free. So many years and so many slices of memories and thoughts leading up to this moment. She wants to stay in it.   
  
They stand a few feet away from everything else, just the two of them. Her Sith has claimed he wants to look at speeders and walked away and Vette hopes he’ll return before she runs out of things to say to her sister.     
  
“See why I hang out with Sith lords?” she jokes because being serious is too overwhelming.    
  
Tivva smiles, then shakes her head. “I just… I can’t believe it.”   
  
“Yeah, I know the feeling.”   
  
“He just paid up? No strings attached?”   
  
“He’s a  _ really  _ weird Sith.” It feels like she’s saying that more often than she should, or thinking it.   
  
“You think he’s doing all these things to deceive you into thinking he’s nice?”    
  
_ Yes _ . Vette nearly says, out of habit and old distrust. _ But no _ .    
  
“That would be stupid,” she says eventually. “And he’s not stupid. Well, he  _ is _ , you know, a little. Like all male humans, I guess, but not like that. Not stupid  _ stupid _ .”   
  
Dangerous stupid. The kind you need to hide and flee from, grab your blaster and shot for your life. They both know their way around people like that.     
  
“I believe you.” Tivva scratches a spot of skin right above her wrist, gaze turning towards the crowds around them, their chatter and shouts rising to the skies.    
  
“Yeah?” Vette grins. And it’s so  _ great  _ to hear it, a blow inside her system like someone’s hit her - except it’s a good kind of hit. Confirmation that she isn’t being ridiculous, that her head hasn’t stopped working.    
  
“I’ve been here for two years, did I mention that?” Her sister doesn’t look at her but Vette can hear the pain between every word. “Sith aren’t worse than anyone else. Really. People are kind of crap. But not nearly everybody.”    
  
“Well, that’s a good thing then.” Vette glances over her shoulder at her Sith. Glances at Thomats, the one person in the galaxy that might know the most about her right now and also somehow the one person that seems to want to know more. Like it’s never enough, like she’s a source of energy or food or whatever it is that Sith devour to keep in touch with the Force.    
  
There’s a pull there, an undercurrent tugging at her and she no longer tries to struggle against it.    
  
Around them, the neon lights guide them on their way home.      



End file.
